We offer a robust search utility to help you find what you're looking for at SkyandTelescope.com. The more you know about how the searches work, the more likely you'll get the results you want.

Where to Start Your Search

Start with the search box near the top of every page on the site. When you enter text in this box, you'll be searching the entire site. That includes online Web content and all our archived content including an index to 60+ years of Sky & Telescope, plus Adobe Acrobat PDF files of most articles published since July 1996. Just enter your search terms into the box, and click the GO button.

How to Narrow Your Search

If you enter a single word in the search box, you're likely to get many more results than you want — especially if the word is a common one. For example, if you enter Moon, you'll find every article that includes even a passing mention of not only Earth's natural satellite, but also any other moon in the solar system. Single-word searches are likely to produce useful results only for unusual words.

This problem can be exacerbated if you enter multiple words in the search box. For example, if you enter Saturn's moon Titan and click GO, you'll every article that mentions Saturn or Titan, plus all those pesky moon articles.

There are two ways to narrow your search with multiple words. First, if the words go together as a phrase, put them in quotation marks. For example, if you enter "Saturn's moon Titan" and click GO, you'll find only those articles that include that exact three-word phrase. But some articles about Titan may not; perhaps they include other phrases such as "Saturn's giant moon Titan" or "Titan, Saturn's moon".

The way around this is to join multiple words by and, or, or and not. So, for example, if you enter Saturn and moon and Titan, you'll find every article that includes all three words anywhere in the title, text, or captions.

To exclude certain results, join your search terms by and not. For example, if you search for rings and not Saturn, you'll find articles that mention all sorts of rings except the ones around Saturn.

Multiple words that aren't in quotation marks and aren't joined by and, or, or and not are treated as if they are joined by or.